Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

1. You get three strikes, but you're not out. What do you call this phenomenon?


2. What size is the engine in this kart?




3. THE SIMPSONS : FUTURAMA :: LEGO : LEGO

In what way?


4. What fictional character seems to have a penchant for four-letter words that begin with "lan"?

Who wins?

Notes: These were the most adversarial-looking images I found in appropriate resolutions. I chose to flip the former (forgetting that I'd left some text in) so they'd look a little more like they were facing off, in case the latter had asymmetrical tattoos. As with its predecessor, I hope the image itself doesn't take up much in the way of bandwidth.

For some time, I'd been planning on making a helluva tough fancomic (a one-shot along the lines of Darths & Droids) to hone my layout skillz, but it turned out that my image-editing skillz weren't up to the task (as you can see by the crudely pasted-in text in this one). The chief problems were appropriate panel spacing and word bubbles. I imagine both of these will be solved in comics I draw myself, the former because I'm planning on using graph paper, and the latter because I can draw them myself.

I'm too lazy to italicize them as is proper, so I'll use that for the ones I've seen to differentiate them from the title bar. I'm sure you can guess how this works as easily as I did.

Best Picture Winners:
1928—Wings/Sunrise
1929—The Broadway Melody
1930—All Quiet on the Western Front
1931—Cimarron
1932—Grand Hotel
1933—Cavalcade
1934—It Happened One Night
1935—Mutiny on the Bounty
1936—The Great Ziegfield
1937—The Life of Emile Zola
1938—You Can't Take It with You
1939—Gone with The Wind
1940—Rebecca
1941—How Green Was My Valley
1942—Mrs. Miniver
1943—Casablanca
1944—Going My Way
1945—The Lost Weekend
1946—The Best Years of Our Lives
1947—A Gentleman's Agreement
1948—Hamlet
1949—All the King's Men
1950—All about Eve
1951—An American in Paris
1952—The Greatest Show on Earth
1953—From Here to Eternity
1954—On the Waterfront
1955—Marty
1956—The King and I
1957—Bridge on the River Kwai
1958—Gigi
1959—Ben Hur
1960—The Apartment
1961—West Side Story
1962—Lawrence of Arabia
1963—Tom Jones
1964—My Fair Lady
1965—The Sound of Music
1966—A Man for All Seasons
1967—In the Heat of the Night
1968—Oliver
1969—Midnight Cowboy
1970—Patton
1971—The French Connection
1972—The Godfather
1973—The Sting
1974—The Godfather Part 2
1975—One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1976—Rocky
1977—Annie Hall
1978—The Deer Hunter
1979—Kramer vs. Kramer
1980—Ordinary People
1981—Chariots of Fire
1982—Gandhi
1983—Terms of Endearment
1984—Amadeus (a good proportion, but audio only to avoid having to get another actor to play the freighter captain)
1985—Out of Africa
1986—Platoon (×2)
1987—The Last Emperor
1988—Rain Man
1989—Driving Miss Daisy
1990—Dances with Wolves
1991—Silence of the Lambs
1992—Unforgiven
1993—Schindler's List
1994—Forrest Gump
1995—Braveheart
1996—The English Patient
1997—Titanic
1998—Shakespeare in Love
1999—American Beauty
2000—Gladiator (×!)
2001—A Beautiful Mind (×2)
2002—Chicago
2003—Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (×3)
2004—Million Dollar Baby
2005—Crash
2006—The Departed
2007—No Country for Old Men

Total: 10/81 (altered from 79 because there are supposedly 80 of them, and one had two awards that were later rolled into one)

Incidentally, the two oldest movies that I've seen in full (as far as I know) were also nominees for '39. I'm sure you can guess which those were.

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies [TV shows]
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie [TV show].
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

I've altered this as little as possible to make it viable; it also includes shows that I used to like, to fill out the numbers. (I wanted quotes that I remembered, so that narrowed the list quite a bit.) I also randomized the order by a method that's a tribute to one of the shows. Also, one was from an episode that I just saw the other day.

1. "Pathetic human race. Arranging their knowledge by category just made it easier to absorb. Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands! Ha ha ha ha!" ( blitzcon )

2. "I've spent my whole life stickin' it to the man. If I do this, I'll be the man. I don't think I can be the man." ( phoenix_talon )

3. "IT'S ALIVE, ALIVE! I've always wanted to say that." ( phoenix_talon )

4. "Don't touch that dial. And, if your TV has a dial, go buy a new one."

5. "What's the matter? Teacher's pet got cold feet? Anytime, pretty boy!"

6. "This oven door has run off with your wife, so you decide to gear-up and get even."

7. "Urge to kill... fading... fading... fading - rising! Fading... fading... gone." ( phoenix_talon )

8. "I let him think for a while 'cause I knew he had the answer. I knew it was a good answer, and he was going to tell it to me. 'Cause when you ask a question, you expect an answer. That's the way it works... question, answer, answer, question. If he gave the answer, I'd have to come up with the question. That would be Jeopardy[!]. That's wrong."

9. "Now calm down son, listen to daddy. It's just a bad dream. I promise you, Senator Thurmond is not in your closet. That's a good boy. Yes, okay you go back to bed now."

10. "There are over 13,000 cabs in New York City, but there is only one that pays you." ( Ms. mizuno_youko )

What do the following have in common?

The answers are in the trivia sections on IMDB, but if you know by yourself, I'll be impressed.

After I'd seen it as the featured setting in the 3rd-Edition Oriental Adventures, I jumped at a chance to get a sub-mint copy of an older book on Rokugan at a damn good price. (I never can resist a deal.) Well, I thought OA had bad Japango (counterpart to Engrish), but the AEG version puts it to shame. Just for laughs, let's see if you can understand any of the biggest chunk of text:

I don't even want to talk about the Japanese handwriting. . . .

Incidentally, it also occurred to me that one of my new tags, yōsei Nihon-go, is a self-referencing term. I intended it as a counterpart to wasei Eigo.

Meanwhile, I thought of making a one-shot set in Rokugan a while back, but now with the further information, it's starting to coalesce. More on that later . . .

※I've just sent in my supplemental amazon order, but the regularly scheduled July one is still open.

※"The Vecna, the. Wayne Reynolds shows us that no one who speaks Abyssal could be an evil man." —Dragon 348. I know at least one reader who will catch at least one of the references—if he actually bothers to check LJ.

※Since borrowing the Call of Cthulhu rulebook from lokodraucarn, I had an idea for another investigative one-shot adventure. Unfortunately, I'm not confident in my ability to keep an appropriate mood—particularly considering most of my contact with the Mythos comes from Irregular Webcomic! (Incidentally, remember that other than Cthulhu, who is making personal appearances, the folks in that comic are fictional characters that just happen to have similar names and appearances to real-life figures, as you can see from the facts that Terry has a "y" in her name, and Jamie occasionally uses exclamation points.) This is compounded by the fact that I eventually realized that the easiest way to have a group of investigators without having to explain them at length to the players is by using the famous crew of the Mystery Machine. . . .

Out of 20 quizzes, eight have had people even try to answer. Some of them are really easy, too.

Don't even ask me about the times I've asked people for help. . . .